About Lisa

Lisa Kotz Mishler, the daughter of Holocaust survivors and heroes Sol and Luba Kotz, grew up hearing stories of her parents life in Poland during WW II. As a professional painter working primarily in oils, acrylics and watercolor, those stories began to influence her work. Her first book, L’Chayim-To Life, as a collection of paintings, and narration inspired by her parents harrowing and miraculous journey in Poland before emigrating to the United Stated.

Lisa’s work has been shown in the Louvre in Paris, as well as in galleries in the United States.

Lisa Mishler is also prize-winning painter who lives in Tucson, Arizona. She studied photography and media arts in college and spent 20 years as an interior designer. While working full time she also found time for taking art classes and painting. After she retired she continued to develop her painting skills and became certiﬁed to teach at The Drawing Studio (TDS). Today she teaches “Abstract Painting” classes at TDS and for a variety of arts organizations in Arizona.

Lisa’s early years as an artist were inﬂuenced by the work of Paul Cezanne, Joan Miro and Marc Chagall. Her work has evolved over time. As an emerging artist she was known for her dreamlike watercolors and imaginative landscapes. More recently she studied intensively with noted Tucson painter, Josh Goldberg and has developed her own recognizable abstract style on the canvas. Today she works mostly in acrylics creating abstract, landscape and portrait pieces. She has become more experimental in this work adding texture using state-of-the-art mediums and incorporating collage on the canvas. Recent mixed media work, while mostly acrylic based, includes watercolor, encaustic and even oil paint as part of her newly evolved experimental approach.

“I want to be known as a versatile artist as I delight in experimentation and discovery.” said Lisa in a recent conversation. “I am inspired by everyday encounters – my family, my dogs, daily early morning walks through the desert. I bring these experiences to the studio and then I paint”. I’m always amazed by what appears on the canvas.”

Lisa is a signature member of the Southern Arizona Watercolor Guild (SAWG), a Signature member of Aqueous and an active member in the Southern Arizona Artist Guild (SAAG), Contemporary Artists of Southern Arizona (CASA), PaperWorks: the Sonoran Collective for Paper and Book Artists, Southern Arizona Wax Artists (SAZWAX) and the Tubac Center of the Arts.Lisa exhibits regulary with these organizations.